Author: Laura Conrad

Thanksgiving Planning

I’m expecting 8 or 9 people at my place for Thanksgiving
dinner. I do Thanksgiving every year for my family and whatever friends
don’t get to their families and want to come.

I have a schedule worked out where I go buy the turkey on Wednesday
afternoon so it only has to take up refrigerator space for less
than 24 hours, until it goes in the oven on Thursday.

I was freaking out a little when I realized yesterday that the
farm share vegetables are right now taking up the space that I
would normally put the turkey in.

I evolved a plan while walking the dog this morning where the people who are coming on Tuesday for the Cantabile Band
rehearsal would all take some of the vegetables home and
come back on Thursday afternoon with side dishes.

I may still do that, but when I looked at the vegetables I
realized that a lot of them are beets, which I’ve been getting
all summer and fall, but not using because they’ll still be good
for Borscht in the winter. They’re going to last until winter
because they’re in the refrigerator, but it won’t hurt them to
be out of the refrigerator for a day or two. But if you want to
come to Thanksgiving dinner and cook a beet side dish, you’re welcome.

Corporate bureaucracy

A dog park friend works as a web developer at some corporation
that believes a computer is a computer is a computer.

So the computer they buy for everyone works quite well for the
people who use one browser and a wordprocessor and maybe
a spreadsheet and maybe a mail client.

But if you do web development, you have to test on lots of
browsers, and often have lots of windows open in each, and an
editor with numerous windows open.

So the way he tells the story, he had requested numerous times
that he get more memory on his computer. And then one day he
realized that he could double the amount of memory for $10, and
he had that much in his pocket, so he did it. And then they
yelled at him for not following the proper procedure.

Steroid inhalers and voice range


[vocal chords with fungal infection]

Like many people with asthma, I use a steroid inhaler
regularly. But the cold I had in early October led to a very
bad flare-up of the asthma, and I’ve been taking the maximum number of puffs a day
ever since, which is quite a lot longer than I’ve ever taken
that much before.

I was wondering when I was going to be able to stop, but not
thinking very much about it. But then I started practicing the
pieces I’m going to be singing on the
December 17 concert, making a point of starting on the
correct pitch, and I found that my range was down by quite a bit
from what it normally is, and I was having troubly hitting the D
2 D’s above middle C, and even feeling uncomfortable with the B
above middle C.

It occurred to me that I had heard about there being side
effects from prolonged use of the inhalers, so I googled
it, and sure enough, there was not only scholarly writing,
but pictures like the one above.

The writing was reassuring about the problems going away if you
stop the inhaler, although a little vague about the time
frame.

So I’m not taking the inhaler any more, and hoping for the
best, and vocalizing very carefully before I practice. It’s not
really quite time to stop, so I’m having some trouble sleeping
at night.

I’m wondering if my regular steroid use is part of why my voice
in general
is so much lower than it was when I was younger. In college I
started out on Second Soprano, and then switched to First Alto.
Now I’m definitely a Second Alto, and lots of choirs would
probably be better off with me on First Tenor, if they weren’t
so prejudiced about female tenors.

I hope I get the alto range back in time to sing the D’s and
E’s on the concert. If not, we need to cut a couple of things
to make the program the right lenghth, and if those pieces
aren’t the right ones to cut, I can play them on recorder. I
will discuss this with my doctor, but it sounds from the google
search like switching from one kind of inhaler to another
doesn’t help.

I also read this
article in the New York Times, about people who have learned
a breathing technique that lets them use less of no steroid
inhalers. I’ve been trying it informally, but haven’t sent the
Buteyko Center
any money for real instruction.

Ordered the turntable

I wrote about wanting
to digitize all my LP’s, and what I was thinking of buying
to do it.

When I actually went to order a turntable, I was somewhat
surprised to realize that there was a wide gap between what was
being marketed to the teenage “let’s go over to your mom’s
basement and listen to some records” market and the audiophile
“lets compare these three cartridges with different weighted
tone arms” market, with very little in between. And looking at
what was in between reminded me very strongly that I’ve bought
two turntables in my life, and both of them are dead.

I realized that I don’t need to pay for more hardware that
knows how to digitize sound, because I already have soundcards
of a sort in all my computers, and a very good, special purpose
but quite usable for this application, soundcard in my Zoom
H2. (I should tell you about it, but that’s another
post.)

The item I was expecting to order in the post referenced above
includes speakers, which means it would take up too much space
on my bookshelves which already have lots of much better
speakers on them.

So in the end, I went for a low-end audiophile
system. I pored over the needledoctor site, and
ended up ordering the Pro-Ject
Debut III Turntable in Basic Black. It will be
upgradeable if I decide I want to be more audiophile, and
probably won’t break in quite the same way as my two consumer
turntables did. Another connector tax on the new audio system
was that I had to buy a preamp.
I’ll have to spend some more money if I decide I like digitizing
vinyl enough to get into 78’s, but I won’t need more space on my
bookshelves.

I’ll let you know how much I end up using it.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=laymusicorg-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B000VBH2IG&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=laymusicorg-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B001FUIQN2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

Tuscan kale salad with honey mustard vinaigrette

The item in the farm share I picked up last Saturday that
seemed most seductive (even more so than the two giant stalks of
brussel sprouts) was the bunch of dark green pebbly textured
tuscan kale.

The recipe I read before making the salad was this one.

Then I chopped up the kale in thin ribbons, made a vinaigrette,
using my usual oil, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and mustard.
I increased the mustard from half a teaspoon to a full teaspoon,
and added some honey and a couple of cloves of garlic.

Then I added walnuts and grated parmesan cheese. I dressed the
salad before the band rehearsal — this was a good idea. Even
doing it earlier in the day wouldn’t have wilted the kale.

The eight people at the rehearsal demolished the salad from the
quite large bunch of kale very speedily. Everybody said it was
good, and there weren’t any plates that had remnants on them.

Instruments and Music for sale

Please reply directly to Natalie Palme at (617) 731-1560; my only connection to
these items is that I promised to put the information online for her.

Instruments

  1. Harpsichord, Zuckerman, made from kit by Thomas Todd, 1964,
    using cherry wood, SOLD
  2. Vielle, Westover, with wooden case and bow, SOLD
  3. Porka psaltery by A.M.+H.W. Westover, 1984, $250.00
  4. Cornetto, Christopher Monk, SOLD

Music

Bärenreiter new clothbound volumes of full scores: Bach, Handel,
Mozart, Schubert, Telemann. Includes opera, choral, orchestral,
concerti, etc. List available on request.

Report on the November 17, 2009, meeting

We played:

Schedule

We will have our regular dropin meeting on November
24, at 7:45 at my place.

For the first three weeks in December, the meetings will be
restricted to the performers in the December 17 concert.

On December 17, three of us (me Ishmael and Anne) will be
playing a concert at the Boston Public Library at 2 PM in the Rabb
Lecture Hall. (More
information about the program.) If you’re goin anywhere where
people would want to know about this, please take them a flyer.

The party will be on December
20. I’ll have invitations shortly.
We usually start around 4 in the afternoon.

Other events

John Tyson and Aldo Abreu are having a series of recorder
masterclasses at the New England Conservatory. The next one is
tomorrow, November 19 at 7:30 pm at
the New England Conservatory, Jordan Hall entrance. The class will
be in the Carr Organ Room on the 3rd floor and is free admission and
open to all.

Statistics Education

Ask anyone who deals with mathematics and the general
population, and they will tell you the general level of
understanding is low. But I was still surprised to read an
editorial
in this morning’s New York Times, which said:

Whereas native-born children’s language skills follow a bell curve, immigrants’ children were crowded in the lower ranks: More than three-quarters of the sample scored below the 85th percentile in English proficiency.

I believe that the general point is true, but the statement as
written makes the opposite point. In the general population, by definition 85
percent are below the 85th percentile. So if only three
quarters (75%) of immigrants’ children are below the 85th
percentile, that means that 25% of them are above the 85th
percentile, which is better than in the general population.

I suspect that it’s a typo of some kind, and maybe it’s that
three quarters of the immigrants’ children are below the 65th
percentile or some such. But the Times proofreader would have
caught it as fast as I did if he or she really understood the meaning of “percentile”. Or maybe it was the translation of three quarters into 75% that the proofreader was weak on.

Why is there more street cleaning in Cambridge than there used to be?

Cambridge used to clean the streets once a month from April to
November. A couple of years ago, they extended that, and now
they clean in December as well.

I was chatting about that with a group of longtime Cambridge
residents, and one of them stated as an absolute fact that this
was because of global warming — that the leaves used to be
finished falling by November, but now they’re still falling so
they need to do the last streetcleaning later. She might have
expanded this theory to include that another reason they don’t
clean in the winter months is that it can’t be done with deep
piles of snow in at the sides of the streets, and global warming
might have led to fewer large snowstorms in December.

Someone who was on the City Council or in the Department of
Public Works might be able to answer this question
definitively. My impression is that the streets always had
leaves in them all through the winter because of the ones that
fell or blew after the November cleaning, and what’s changed is
the demographics of Cambridge residents, who are now more likely
to complain about leaves in the gutters.

New England weather is so erratic that I don’t think a
climatologist would really care to predict the effect of global
warming on the amount of snow in December. It wouldn’t surprise
me at all if it went up instead of down.

Julie and Julia (the book)

So far I’ve only read the book;
I’ll probably tell you more when the movie comes out on DVD and I
see it next month or so.

I enjoyed it. When I realized how big a pain reading the PDF
from the library was, I decided that if it wasn’t finished
by the time it expired, with just reading it on the laptop at
lunchtime, I would take the hardcover out of the library. But
then I saw that Fictionwise had a 100%
rebate on it, so I bought it from there.

100% rebates aren’t quite the same thing as getting something
for free. It’s their way of getting people to sometimes send
them money even if they’re mostly shopping on micropay rebates.
So you shouldn’t get the 100% rebate if you aren’t going to use
it to buy something you really want, but if there are several books on your wishlist that
you’re intending to give them money for, you might as well give
them money for something else, and then get the books you really
want for free. So I finished Julie and Julia in the comfort of my normal
reading device.

I discussed it with a friend who
said she’d enjoyed it, but she had several friends who hadn’t
because of the liberal use of the f-word. This could be another
post, but the conclusion of the other post would be that I don’t believe in judging people because of
their use of that diction, but I don’t use it because I’m aware
that there are a lot of people who do.

In any case, it was fun to read about someone tackling all
those recipes hardly anyone does these days. She finishes with
the Pâté de Canard en Croûte,
where you bone the duck and stuff it with pâté and
then bake it inside of a pastry shell. Most food writers
wouldn’t describe their hysterical weeping fits when the pastry
went straight from a too-dry heap to a buttery puddle.

The other impressive thing was actually doing it at all. I’ve
been feeling heroic for just getting a blog entry out there
every day, when I don’t even have a job or a commute. She not
only did a blog post in the morning before work, but put
together a shopping list, then shopped on the way home and
cooked after that. She got some help on the shopping and
cooking from her husband and friends, but really it was a pretty
heroic effort.

I thought that the book was a little long for the
material, but of course that may well make it a better
movie.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=laymusicorg-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=031604251X&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr